Part 2 of The Pipeline to Predators, a four-part Ms. investigation into the modeling industry’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein and survivors’ fight for accountability.
Ms. interviewed five survivors who worked in the modeling industry from the 1990s through the early 2000s, and reviewed public testimony and media accounts from many others. While every survivor’s experience is unique, our investigation showed a clear pattern: young women with big dreams, steered toward powerful men who often abused them.
Survivors of abuse by Epstein and his associates and by other powerful men in the modeling industry are now doing work that many institutions and governments have failed to so far: They’re tracing the relationships, patterns and prosecutorial lapses that allowed the abuse to continue, and mapping a path forward toward accountability.
In March, the Model Alliance, a New York-based advocacy organization that strives for the fair treatment of workers and to stop abuses within the fashion industry, sent a letter to New York Attorney General Letitia James and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), urging state and federal investigations into “whether modeling agencies and executives knowingly facilitated access between Epstein and young models, including whether agents introduced, referred, trafficked or supplied minors or aspiring models to Epstein and his associates.”
The letter declared, “Jeffrey Epstein was not a rogue outlier, but a beneficiary of—and a participant in—this system.” It was signed by more than 40 Epstein survivors and former models “impacted by sexual abuse and trafficking in the industry.” (Khanna responded with a promise to share the information contained in the letter with the House Oversight Committee and advocate for an investigation.)
The models who spoke with Ms. confirm what the letter asserts: that agents and agencies commonly encouraged them to socialize outside formal assignments, attend parties and events, meet powerful men one-on-one, or even go on “dates.” These activities were presented as important, even necessary, for career advancement. For some, these introductions led directly to abuse by the same men.
The Model Alliance calls modeling “a $2.5 trillion global industry” in which “agencies have operated with minimal oversight while exercising sweeping control over a uniquely vulnerable workforce.” Agencies headquartered or with significant presence in the U.S. recruit, place and manage talent across dozens of countries, moving girls and young women between continents.
The work of the Model Alliance, along with the information revealed in the partial release of the Epstein files, has brought renewed scrutiny to several key figures in the modeling industry for their connections to Epstein.
One such figure is Faith Kates, cofounder of Next Management, a leading agency. (Kates stepped down from Next in November 2025, just weeks after the Epstein estate released about 23,000 pages of documents and shortly before the Department of Justice’s December files’ release.) Like Ford Models, Next is headquartered in the U.S., and it follows the same global business model. Kates founded the agency in New York in 1989 before expanding to London, Paris and Milan within a few years.
According to a March 2026 investigation by The Guardian, Kates hosted dinners where she introduced models to wealthy businessmen, and she maintained a close relationship with Epstein, expressing support and “unconditional” friendship to him in 2009 (shortly after his 2008 guilty plea and registration as a sex offender), and continuing to correspond with him until weeks before his 2019 arrest. In one 2011 exchange, after Epstein emailed her a list of three women, Kates responded: “I can get 2 that’s what you asked me for stand by.”
A spokesperson for Kates told The Guardian that she had “never put a model in harm’s way by sending them to inappropriate go-sees or meetings,” adding: “Epstein was a master manipulator. People around him knew only what he wanted them to know.”
Stacey Williams—a successful model in the 1990s—tells Ms. that Kates introduced her to Epstein at a dinner in 1992. A few months later, according to Williams, Kates took her to a party hosted by Trump at the Plaza Hotel, where she again met Epstein. Williams later developed what she has described as a dating relationship with Epstein, which lasted a few months.
Williams is now a survivor advocate pushing for accountability in both the U.S. and abroad. She was one of the early models to bring national attention to Epstein’s connections to the modeling world in the 2024 documentary Beyond the Gaze, about Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions. In subsequent interviews, Williams alleged that she was assaulted by Donald Trump in 1993, when Epstein brought her to Trump Tower, and Trump placed his hands on her breasts, waist and buttocks. The president has denied the allegations.
Sara Ziff, founder of the Model Alliance, has also described being sent by agents at Next Management to Fabrizio Lombardo, former head of Miramax Italy, a European branch of the film company cofounded by convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein. In a 2023 lawsuit, she alleged that her agency sent her to Lombardo for a “go-see” and that he later raped her. Her case against Lombardo was resolved. Lombardo has not publicly responded to Ziff’s 2023 allegations.
Ziff explains that the structure of the modeling industry, the dependency it creates, lends itself to this type of abuse. Some models, in particular those from Eastern Europe, are especially vulnerable through agency control over their immigration status, debts and housing.
When she initially opened the Model Alliance support line, she tells Ms., “I was inundated with inquiries about … financial and sexual abuse, and it was almost all focused on the agencies, which is ironic because they are supposed to be representing our interests.”
In May, Roza, a former model, testified using only her first name at a Palm Beach, Fla., hearing convened by Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee.
She was 18 when she met Jean-Luc Brunel, owner of MC2 Model Management, who, she said, promised her a “modeling career beyond my dreams.”
Within six months, MC2 had obtained an O-1 visa for her, a visa reserved for people of “extraordinary ability,” which she said she lacked the documentation to earn. By May 2009, she was in New York; within three months the agency claimed she owed it more than $10,000.
“The ticket back home cost $1,300 round trip. I was given $100 a week in New York City to survive,” she testified. “MC2 controlled every aspect of my life: where I went, how I dressed and how I looked. They provided just enough of an allowance to keep me afloat, but never enough to be independent.”
Her agency sent her to West Palm Beach. There, Brunel brought her to Epstein, who she said abused and raped her for three years while he “was under house arrest for the molestation of underage girls at the exact time.” Brunel founded MC2 in 2005 with financial backing from Epstein, and according to the Model Alliance, Brunel was also an original investor in Next Management.
French authorities placed Brunel under formal investigation in December 2020 in a probe connected to Epstein. He died by apparent suicide in a French prison in February 2022, while being held on charges of the rape of minors and sexual harassment, and allegations of trafficking.
Together, these accounts explain why survivors are asking investigators to examine the agencies, executives and scouts around Epstein—not only Epstein himself.
Part 3, “Epstein Survivors Connect the Dots as Investigations Advance Abroad,” will be available here on Wednesday, Oct. 7.
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Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. What’s your reproductive freedom story? Add your voice. Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible.
